ways of thinking and acting continue to show remarkable re-
silience and continuity with the past.
SEE ALSO Balinese Religion; Batak Religion; Bornean Reli-
gions; Buddhism, article on Buddhism in Southeast Asia;
Bugis Religion; Drama, article on Javanese Wayang; Islam,
article on Islam in Southeast Asia; Javanese Religion; Mega-
lithic Religion, article on Historical Cultures; Melanesian
Religions, overview article; Toraja Religion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A useful starting point for the study of Southeast Asian religions
is Waldemar Stöhr and Piet Zoetmulder’s Die Religionen In-
donesiens (Stuttgart, 1965). A French translation of this vol-
ume is available: Les religions d’Indonésie (Paris, 1968). Stöhr
examines various specific traits of the tribal religions of Indo-
nesia and the Philippines on a regional basis, while Zoet-
mulder provides a succinct introduction to Hinduism, Bud-
dhism, and Islam in Indonesia, together with an excellent
discussion of the Balinese religion. Stöhr has since extended
his general examination in Die Altindonesischen Religionen
(Leiden, 1976). Both volumes have extensive and useful bib-
liographies. The general study of animism by the Dutch mis-
sionary-ethnographer A. C. Kruijt, Het animisme in den In-
dischen archipel (The Hague, 1906), is of historic interest as
is the study of the Batak religion by the German missionary
Johannes G. Warneck, Die Religion der Batak (Leipzig,
1909). Three studies of particular traditional religions by
Leiden-trained anthropologists emphasizing features of com-
plementary duality are Richard Erskine Downs’s The Reli-
gion of the BareDe-Speaking Toradja of Central Celebes (The
Hague, 1956), Hans Schärer’s Ngaju Religion, translated by
Rodney Needham (1946; reprint, The Hague, 1963), and
Peter Suzuki’s The Religious System and Culture of Nias, Indo-
nesia (The Hague, 1959). Roy F. Barton has provided con-
siderable documentation on the Ifugao, including a study of
their religion, The Religion of the Ifugaos (Menasha, 1946);
Clifford Geertz has contributed enormously to the study of
Java, particularly with an influential book, The Religion of
Java (Glencoe, Ill., 1960). Our understanding of traditional
religions has also been greatly enhanced by a series of recent
ethnographies: Erik Jensen’s The Iban and Their Religion
(Oxford, 1974), Michelle Z. Rosaldo’s Knowledge and Pas-
sion (Cambridge, 1980), Gregory L. Forth’s Rindi (The
Hague, 1981), and Peter Metcalf’s A Borneo Journey into
Death (Philadelphia, 1982), as well as by a number of as yet
unpublished Ph.D. dissertations: Elizabeth Gilbert Traube’s
“Ritual Exchange among the Mambai of East Timor” (Har-
vard University, 1977), Robert William Hefner’s “Identity
and Cultural Reproduction among the Tengger-Javanese,”
(University of Michigan, 1982), E. D. Lewis’s “Tana Wai
Brama” (Australian National University, 1982), and Janet
Alison Hoskins’s “Spirit Worship and Feasting in Kodi,
West Sumba” (Harvard University, 1984).
New Sources
Gibson, Thomas. Sacrifice and Sharing in the Philippine High-
lands: Religion and Society among the Buid of Mindoro. Lon-
don and Dover, N.H., 1986.
Kipp, Rita Smith, and Susan Rodgers, eds. Indonesian Religions in
Transition. Tucson, 1987.
McAmis, Robert Day. Malay Muslims: The History and Challenge
of Resurgent Islam in Southeast Asia. Grand Rapids, Mich.,
2002.
Schiller, Anne Louise. Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cul-
tural Identity among the Ngaju of Indonesia. New York, 1997.
Wessing, Robert, and Roy E. Jordaan. “Death at the Building
Site: Construction Sacrifice in Southeast Asia.” History of Re-
ligions 37 (1997): 101–121.
JAMES J. FOX (1987)
Revised BibliographySOUTHEAST ASIAN RELIGIONS: NEW
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN INSULAR
CULTURES
Uprisings with religious content have occurred throughout
insular Southeast Asian history, but religious movements
show a distinctive focus. They are not anarchic protests but
organized efforts, of national or international scope, to
achieve reforms or some other positive objective. Such move-
ments are apparent especially since the beginning of this cen-
tury. By limiting the discussion to such movements, we can
at least begin to summarize a complicated fabric of history
in which local processes are as varied as they are fascinating.
For the sake of simplicity, it is convenient to group the myri-
ad insular Southeast Asian religious movements under the
three streams of religious tradition from which they draw,
in part, their inspiration: Buddhism and Hinduism, Islam,
and Christianity. These are discussed with reference to the
major island or peninsular areas of Southeast Asia: Indonesia,
Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
HINDU-BUDDHIST MOVEMENTS. The first important twen-
tieth-century Hindu-Buddhist movement was Budi Utomo
(“high endeavor”) founded in 1908 by three students from
the colonial Netherlands Indies medical school (STOVIA).
The movement gained early adherents in other colonial tech-
nical schools, those for veterinarians and engineers, suggest-
ing that the Western technical training was leaving the native
students without any cultural or religious grounding, and
that such grounding is what they sought in movements like
Budi Utomo. Budi Utomo hoped to revitalize the deeply
cherished Hindu-Buddhist-Javanist core of the Indonesian
identity, so that a meaningful and respectable alternative
could be found to the values offered by the West. Looking
to India’s Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi as
inspirations in the revival of these traditions, Budi Utomo
was controlled by the aristocracy and intelligentsia and never
gained a broad popular following, although it had amassed
some ten thousand members within a year of its founding.
Another movement, Taman Siswa (“garden of learn-
ing”), has a cultural grounding similar to that of Budi
Utomo, but, unlike the earlier movement, it emphasized ed-
ucation. Taman Siswa was founded by Suwardi Surjaningrat,
later known as Ki Hadjar Dewantara (“teacher of the gods”).
Inspired by Tagore as well as such critics of Western ed-
ucation as Maria Montessori, Dewantara founded schools8652 SOUTHEAST ASIAN RELIGIONS: NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN INSULAR CULTURES